The Graveyards We Leave Behind

Nyx's eyes flutter open, engulfing her vision in the darkness of reality. She dreams in color, but in the real world his hands don't touch her like they do in her mind. The windows of the Ark are permanently shut, and the only light that pollutes the air is the blue of the alarm clock sitting on the nightstand. She glances over the body to her right to see the clock read just past four.

Her nightly adventures guaranteed that she knew this monstrous sky ship much better than most and did not need the light to guide her as she reaches for her pants, then her shirt, and then the doorknob. Her movements are almost robotic, and these steps are all pre-programmed within her because this has been a dawn ritual for the past three years. She turns the knob slowly, her feet pitter-pattering their way into the vast halls of the Ark only stopping in their tracks when the sound of voices beats against her eardrums. They are too close, and she doesn't have time to run.

"The night goddess strikes again," Shumway mocks with a wide grin on his face as he strips her with his eyes. They are devilish as they peel the clothes off her body so easily - no hesitation at all.

It is too early. Something is off. The guards don’t do first rounds until five. She should have had at least another 50 minutes for a clean escape, yet here she stands with Shumway's eyes undressing her, and Bellamy's squinting into her soul.

"Visit me tomorrow," Shumway solicits before taking a step her way. He has almost forgotten where he is headed by the sight of her scantily dressed physique. The rumors are true after all. He will find a way to have his share, he thinks.

"I can use that gun better than you can," she warns, watching him hesitate to walk any further as her words hit him like bullets of her own. Guns don't scare her. Nothing scares her. Nyx's eyes take Bellamy in peripherally, remembering the sparing she'd done with him when he was training to be a guardsman.

"Is that a threat?" Shumway demands. This is how powerful men on the Ark stayed in power. Everything is a threat. Everyone else is a threat. They are all scared. Nyx thinks she has an upper-hand on all of them. After all, death is not the end.

"Nyx," the name comes out of his mouth like a whisper as he says it, but it feels like a crashing wave when it lands on her ears. Her eyes don’t seem to look at his - they seem to collide with them. There is a force of a thousand tons behind their stare, and she could hear herself gulp.

"I'll walk her back, sir, to make sure she doesn’t follow," the young man's words are concise, but she could hear the intent behind them. It's as if she's in a state of hypnosis because she doesn't think it strange that Bellamy should be sneaking around the ship so early with a horde of guardsmen.

Shumway doesn't protest because Bellamy's words remind him that there is a mission to be followed through. Instead, Shumway nods in agreement, but she does not see Shumway anymore. Every word Bellamy speaks is so thick it hangs like velvet curtains enveloping them, just the two of them. She doesn't know if the others really left, or if she just couldn’t see them because she could only see him in her tunnel vision.

He grabs her by the wrist when her feet don’t move, and she shudders at the burn of his touch. This is not the time, she reminds herself as she crushes the arousal like a half smoked cigarette and yanks her arm away from him. He looks over at her as they walk. The face he gives her is full of disappointment, maybe also regret, or concern, or pity. She doesn't really know. Emotions are like a swirling galaxy before her eyes, and the only thing she could really pick out anymore is a carnal desire. That, she is sure, is not there.

After what feels like a hundred years she is at her door. He lets her walk in, but does not let her close it. Before she has a chance to say something he opens his mouth, and she melts, like butter, into silence.

"They're sending the prisoners to the ground in two hours. Come with me," his eyes are searching hers for a reaction, any reaction to let him know that he's doing the right thing by telling her. He is nervous. This is the first time he's talked to her in three years, and he can feel the butterflies eating at the walls of his belly.

A quiet falls between them as Nyx contemplates his words. "Where?" she asks. The look on her face is the definition of stoic, offering no consolation to him.

"To the ground," he repeats like it's obvious. He doesn't have the time to play games with her, nor does he have the courage.

"You're not a prisoner," she retorts. She understands what he means, but wants to give him a hard time. He deserves it.

"Octavia is, and she's not going alone," his words reinforce her speculation. They are cut with determination to save his sister, but also with intent to persuade Nyx.

Nyx doesn't need to ask what's waiting for them down there. She doesn’t really care anyway. Anything is better than floating in a tin can in the sky of the universe, waiting to get the air sucked out of your lungs. Besides, she isn't afraid to die. Death is not the end.

"Why do you want me to come?" she is teasing, but if she is honest, she's wondering why he is asking her. This is the first time they've talked in years. Why did he even tell her that he's leaving? She is not stupid, not naïve. He needs something. Every man she's ever met needed something from her. There is a smirk on her face when she sees his eyes racing to give her a smart response. She is enjoying testing his temper. She misses it.

"Maybe you could watch my six," his words flutter toward her like a light-hearted joke. "Besides," he pauses debating how to defend his decision to tell her in a way that seems appropriate, "Octavia wouldn’t forgive me if I didn’t ask."

Nyx nods in understanding. Octavia had been her bestfriend until she was thrown to rot in the skybox. She had visited her often the first few years, until she jumped down the rabbit-hole of loveless sex, that is. "What's the plan?"

Before she knows it she is walking down the cold grey halls of the Ark in a guard's jacket. Bellamy instructed her not to wait for him, but to grab a prisoner under the arm, walk them onto the ship and not come back. He had something to do before he climbed aboard. What that was he didn’t disclose, but she knew better than to ask. She could tell when his eyes are up to no good.

It seemed impossible to her that she could sneak through the Ark and walk out of it in plain sight, but when she grabs Finn under the arm and doesn’t look back she knows that she's finally free. Not one of the conscious prisoners who had climbed aboard willingly seem to notice when she sits down and straps herself into the very last seat in the corner of the ship. No one but her seems to notice when Bellamy does the same. That is biased, though, considering she notices everything about Bellamy.

As they shoot through space she watches all the waking kids attempting to frantically decipher what's happening. They argue with one another, and they laugh at each other's expense. There is a climate of relief in the ship. When they woke up they were all weeks or even days before being floated, and now they're hurtling through space, close to hitting the Earth's atmosphere. They are savoring in the bit of hope they have before their fate is decided.

"Bellamy," she turns to look at him as she gasps out his name. She has lived her whole life in space, but their stationary orbit did not prepare her for this turbulence. His fingers find a way to tangle themselves with hers as he watches her struggle to hold the sickness back. She squeezes his hand hard, and he squeezes back grounding her in this moment of reality. Had the ship not been grey it would be bursting with color right now. Memories attempt to claw their way out from the fringe of her mind, but she pushes them back insisting that this is not the time to drudge up old love. Honestly, at any other moment in time she would have moaned in desire feeling his skin on hers, but now it's…gone?

She opens her eyes and the grey reality floods back in. It must have been a dream. When she looks to her side the seat is vacant. Did she imagine him there this whole time? No. She felt his hand. It was real. She couldn’t forget that burn because it was engraved in her memory, and she had never dreamt in such a way that felt real before.

There are shouts in the distance that flutter to her ears, but they sound ecstatic. She waits a few minutes, taking in the idea that this is not the end, until the commotion dies down, and then she unbuckles herself from her seat. In the space between her and the lower floor she can hear the hatch opening, the cheers from the teens, and Octavia's shout.

Nyx climbs down to the first level, hands cold from the steel of the ladder. She would instantly forget it as she looks through the open door and out into the horizon. There are trees, the leaves on them are as many shades of green as she could imagine. Grass, its blades are uneven and patchy where the sun has burned them through the gaps of the tree branches. Flowers of all colors, and shapes, and sizes. The smell is unlike anything she could even begin to describe, even with the smoke coming off the ship behind her. Her senses were dulled by the grey of the Ark, and now her life is in full color.

There he stands in the open field, the guard jacket he yearned for so many years ago is on his back to match hers. His once slicked dark brown hair is now falling into the soft curls on his forehead that she remembered from years ago. He is smiling, really smiling. His lips are pink and wide, and his teeth are pearly. There is an aura of happiness surrounding him in that moment. When his gaze travels to the ramp she is standing on and captures hers she sees green and blue, yellow and red. There is joy. There is hope. There is love. For a second. His eyes flicker over the teens with an excitement, for another moment they are up to no good. Then they retreat to his sister, and there is relief before he is finally lost in the crowd.